Source of book: I own this
When I go backpacking, I like to bring a book along, for those evenings when the bugs are out and I am not ready to go to sleep yet. Because weight and space are at a premium, and any book taken into the wilderness is at risk for some potential damage, I have tended to take cheap trade paperbacks. They are essentially fungible, and nobody is going to cry if one gets wet in a thunderstorm.
Some years ago, a legal colleague was downsizing, and gave me a bunch of random books. Some are nice hardbacks that reside in my library. Others are paperbacks, often of science fiction from the past, which are currently in boxes in my garage, awaiting a decision as to whether to keep or rehome.
For some of these book, though, they are intriguing enough to at least read once - and hence the source of books for my wilderness wanderings.
For a recent trip, I took Death is a Lonely Business along - it was about perfect for the time I had on my hands, and Bradbury has been a favorite on these trips for a few years.
While I generally like Bradbury’s short stories and novels, I find that I have liked his horror and suspense ones better than I expected. In fact, one of my unpopular opinions is that Fahrenheit 451 is a bit of an overrated book, kind of sexist, and far from subtle.
In contrast, I greatly enjoyed Something Wicked This Way Comes. Perhaps Bradbury struggled (like many others) when trying to be profound, and felt more at ease just telling stories.
Whatever the case, I found Death is a Lonely Business to be an excellent read, in no small part because it combines wonderfully atmospheric writing with a darn good story. That it also ends up being a rather thoughtful reflection on mortality, loneliness, and the way we throw away inconvenient people is a bonus.
One thing I did not know when I read the book was that it is the first book in a trilogy. It stands alone just fine, however - it may well be that Bradbury decided later to write follow-up books.
The book is an homage to the noir detective writers of the past, particularly Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and it certainly has elements drawn from those stories. But it also is very much its own style, with a certain supernatural air about it that is Bradbury’s own way of writing.
The unnamed narrator is, like Bradbury was back in the 1940s, a struggling writer living in Venice, California. These days, Venice is a gentrified, expensive place to live, but it has a rather storied history.
In the early 20th Century, it was developed as a resort town - canals, a pier with carnival rides, seaside cabins, and a trolley route bringing tourists from the city.
After the discovery of oil in the 1930s, wells soon popped up on adjacent land, and oil waste clogged the canals. By the postwar era, the neighborhood was blighted, polluted, and crumbling. The pier was demolished, and for decades afterward, the neighborhood was best known for its street gangs - the “slum by the sea.”
The 21st Century brought a reverse in fortune. The neighborhood still retains a reputation as an artsy community, but income and education levels have risen, and, as I noted, gentrification has set in.
Weirdly, even as a Los Angeles native, I do not remember ever visiting Venice, although I spent plenty of time at neighboring Santa Monica beach and a bit at Marina del Rey to the south as well.
Bradbury’s book looks at the period of decline, as blight was slowly setting in. The descriptions and atmosphere in the book are wonderful and creepy and dark and full of near-constant fog and rain.
So, back to the story. One night, riding the red trolley back home, he senses (and smells) a mysterious man behind him. Afraid to turn around, he simply listens. The man says, mournfully, “Death…is a…Lonely Business.”
Even after the man gets off the trolley, the narrator is creeped out. He goes to a bar and gets a rare drink, then walks home. On the way, he spots a dead body inside a canal, trapped in a decaying carnival wagon discarded there.
The narrator is convinced that the man has been murdered, and that the murderer is the mysterious man in the trolley. But the police detective, Elmo Crumley, is convinced that the man was just old and drunk and took a bad fall.
From there on out, the two main characters undergo a transformation from enemies to frenemies to reluctant friends. And, it gradually becomes apparent that the dead body was not a one-off, and that other people are dying, but in ways that do not seem exactly like murder, but not exactly innocent causes either.
I have to hand it to Bradbury for creating a police character that is actually interesting. Crumley is neither a blundering fool nor a heroic figure. He is cautious and professional, but also has a life of his own - he grows tropical plants, and aspires to be a novelist.
Both of the men are, in their own ways, lonely. Crumley has no partner, and no family. The narrator, like Bradbury, has a girlfriend, but she is away in Mexico doing research for her degree. They can barely afford to talk on the phone, often doing so by gaming the system.
And indeed, this is what connects all of the characters in the book, who are eventually referred to as “the Lonelies.” And what a menagerie they are.
The old men who sit around at the trolley ticket office and talk.
The has-been actress in her mansion playing her films all night, swimming naked in the ocean, and avoiding the public.
The former opera singer who withdrew from the public eye and gained weight after being raped.
The woman who runs the shooting gallery on the pier, who calls herself “Annie Oakley.”
The man who runs a silent film theater in a riverboat anchored by the pier.
The blind African American man who serves as a security guard for an apartment building.
The various immigrants from around the world, struggling to make it in postwar America.
The psychologist (and charlatan) with a huge library of depressing books.
The woman who used to sell canaries years ago.
The narcissistic gay man who both hides and celebrates his identity while trying to deny the effects of age and time.
While the two men are the central characters, and thus get the most development, equal time is given to the other characters whether male or female - it is good to see Bradbury actually care about the women in his story, even if his girlfriend doesn’t get much to do.
Related is the fact that the victims are equally male and female, and the survivors likewise. This isn’t violence against women for its own sake at all. And it really isn’t even violence, particularly. I can’t explain without giving spoilers, and I will not reveal the who in the whodunit either. You will have to read the book for yourself.
The descriptions in the book are a lot of the fun, and they ride the line between colorful and purple just perfectly - the nod to the prose of Chandler in particular is obvious, but Bradbury’s eye for detail is even better. His vision of the fog, the canals filled with oil pollution and garbage, each pathetic apartment with the stains on the walls and the secondhand furniture, the outdated opulence of the mansion, the past-its-prime feeling of everything - it is all so good and perfectly written. This is Bradbury at his best.
The psychological depth of the book also raises it above its genre. The aching loneliness of the narrator bleeds into everything and everyone around him. He is simultaneously one of the Lonelies, and thus perhaps a target for death himself, a “carrier” of whatever malaise is embodied in the mysterious man, and the sole person trying to stem the tide of darkness.
I don’t take notes on paper while backpacking like I do at home, but I did memorize a particular page number because it has what I think is one of the best examples of purple prose done well that I have ever read.
With wondrous timing, the calliope downstairs in the rotunda started up, running the carousel. It sounded like a dragon that had swallowed a corps of bagpipers and was now trying to throw them back up, in no particular order to no particular tune.
Come on, that’s crazy and good and over the top. And also, a calliope! Maybe some Manfred Mann (via Bruce Springsteen) is in order to finish this post…
The book is full of fun lines like that, but also asks some deeper questions. The narrator is obsessed with mortality, like we humans tend to be, but he also is deeply concerned about the lives of the people who slip through the cracks, the forgotten, those who have seemingly “given up” on life. To the narrator, these people have value, even if he is accused of “collecting” these people for use in his stories.
And yes, I suppose they are immortalized in this story. But he also cares about them as people, taking the time to get to know them, to understand their lives. And, of course, to work to prevent them from disappearing.
Thus, Death is a Lonely Business is both a fun and engaging story, a master class in description, and a truly thoughtful and humane call to remember “the least of these.” I think it is one of Bradbury’s best.
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